Related papers: On profinite groups admitting a word with only few…

To any infinite word w over a finite alphabet A we can associate two infinite words min(w) and max(w) such that any prefix of min(w) (resp. max(w)) is the lexicographically smallest (resp. greatest) amongst the factors of w of the same…

We show that, if $w_1, \ldots , w_6$ are words which are not an identity of any (non-abelian) finite simple group, then $w_1(G)w_2(G) \cdots w_6(G) = G$ for all (non-abelian) finite simple groups $G$. In particular, for every word $w$,…

The word $w=[x_{i_1},x_{i_2},\dots,x_{i_k}]$ is a simple commutator word if $k\geq 2, i_1\neq i_2$ and $i_j\in \{1,\dots,m\}$, for some $m>1$. For a finite group $G$, we prove that if $i_{1} \neq i_j$ for every $j\neq 1$, then the verbal…

We deal with the following conjecture. If w is a group word and G is a finite group in which any nilpotent subgroup generated by w-values has exponent dividing e, then the exponent of the verbal subgroup w(G) is bounded in terms of e and w…

A group $G$ is said to have restricted centralizers if for each $g$ in $G$ the centralizer $C_G(g)$ either is finite or has finite index in $G$. Shalev showed that a profinite group with restricted centralizers is virtually abelian. Given a…

A group is $\textit{finitely axiomatizable}$ (FA) in a class $\mathcal{C}$ if it can be determined up to isomorphism within $\mathcal{C}$ by a sentence in the first-order language of group theory. We show that profinite groups of various…

For a positive integer r we prove that if G is a profinite group in which the centralizer of every nontrivial element has rank at most r, then G is either a pro-p group or a group of finite rank. Further, if G is not virtually a pro-p…

Surface groups are determined among limit groups by their profinite completions. As a corollary, the set of surface words in a free group is closed in the profinite topology.

Let v and w be nontrivial words in two free groups. We prove that, for all sufficiently large finite non-abelian simple groups G, there exist subsets C of v(G) and D of w(G) of size such that every element of G can be realized in at least…

We prove that outer commutator words are uniformly concise, i.e. if an outer commutator word w takes m different values in a group G, then the order of the verbal subgroup w(G) is bounded by a function depending only on m and not on w or G.…

Let w be a multilinear commutator and n a positive integer. Suppose that G is a residually finite group in which every product of at most 896 w-values has order dividing n. Then the verbal subgroup w(G) is locally finite.

We call a group $G$ {\it algorithmically finite} if no algorithm can produce an infinite set of pairwise distinct elements of $G$. We construct examples of recursively presented infinite algorithmically finite groups and study their…

If G is a finitely generated powerful pro-p group satisfying a certain law v=1, and if G can be generated by a normal subset T of finite width which satisfies a positive law, we prove that G is nilpotent. Furthermore, the nilpotency class…

In this work, we explore the following question: If two words in a finitely generated free group have identical images as word maps on every finite group, must they be endomorphic to each other? In this regard, we introduce weak profinite…

Anisimov and Seifert show that a group has a regular word problem ifand only if it is finite. Muller and Schupp (together with Dunwoody's accessibility result) show that a group has context free word problem if and only if it is virtually…

A profinite group $G$ is just infinite if every closed normal subgroup of $G$ is of finite index. We prove that an infinite profinite group is just infinite if and only if, for every open subgroup $H$ of $G$, there are only finitely many…

In this note we prove that if $G$ is a finitely generated profinite group then the verbal subgroup $G^{q}$ is open. Equivalently in a $d$-generator finite group every product of $q$th powers is a product of $f(d,q)$ $q$th powers.

We study fibers of word maps in finite, profinite, and residually finite groups. Our main result is that, for any word w in the free group on d generators, there exists $\epsilon > 0$ such that if G is a residually finite group with…

If w is a word in d>1 letters and G is a finite group, evaluation of w on a uniformly randomly chosen d-tuple in G gives a random variable with values in G, which may or may not be uniform. It is known that if G ranges over finite simple…

We study a characteristic subgroup of finitely generated groups, consisting of elements with uniform upper bound for word-lengths. For a group $G$, we denote this subgroup by $G_{bound}$. We give sufficient criteria for triviality and…